Matt Cone June 2, 2012 TutorialsMac

Do you know how much RAM is installed in your Mac? You should. RAM, or random access memory, stores the code and instructions for OS X and any applications open on your Mac. The more RAM you have, the more applications you can have open at once. Knowing how much RAM you have installed in your Mac is an important piece of information that could change how you use your computer.

Here’s how to check how much RAM you have installed:

  • The air is made for people who know what they need, if you are this cheap, no offense, just go with a macbook pro, it uses regular ram that you can easily upgrade. The air is made to be small I doubt apple will change the ram in future macbook air's, because part of this is what makes it so small.
  • The Year of Finally. The 2020 MacBook Air is the first internal upgrade for this laptop, which was redesigned in 2018. The 2018 model came with a 13.3-inch Retina display, Butterfly keyboard, two USB-C ports, a Touch ID sensor, and the same, wedge-shaped design in an even lighter body, and a gold color option.
  • Open Activity Monitor. Click on the Memory tab. Click the Memory column to sort processes by Memory usage. This will make it easier to see which process or app is hogging the RAM.
  1. From the Apple menu, select About This Mac. The window shown below appears.

  2. The amount of memory installed in your computer is displayed.

All Macs being sold today have at least 2 gigabytes (GB) of memory installed. If you need more RAM in your Mac, you can upgrade it - unless you own a MacBook Air. (The RAM modules in the MacBook Air are not replaceable.) See the links at the end of this article for more information.

MacBook Air users fall victim to this scam when visiting websites previously hacked by malicious actors or created for the sole purpose of hosting the contagion. A slew of alerts popping up on such pages say the Flash Player is out of date and prompts the user to download and install the latest version. Here’s how to clean out your MacBook so you can get back to intensive computer work in no time. RELATED: How to Diagnose and Fix an Overheating Laptop Opening up your MacBook to expose its internals sounds like a daunting task, but it’s actually pretty easy since we’re only taking off the bottom cover and nothing else.

Checking Memory Slots on Mac OS 10.7 or Later

If you have Mac OS 10.7 or later, you can see how the memory slots in your computer are currently being utilized. Many Macs have two memory slots, and although Apple recommends that you always have two memory modules of the same size installed, there can be discrepancies.

Here’s how to check your Mac’s memory slots on Mac OS 10.7 or later:

  1. From the Apple menu, select About This Mac.

  2. Click More Info. The About This Mac window appears.

  3. Click Memory. The window shown below appears.

Use the information in this window to determine how many memory modules - and what size memory modules - are currently installed on your computer. You can click the Memory Upgrade Instructions link to access Apple’s guides for replacing the memory modules in your computer.

Help! My Mac is Always Out of Memory

If your Mac always seems to be running out of memory, you probably need to upgrade the RAM. You can never have enough! If you own a newer iMac, Mac Mini, or MacBook Pro that you purchased in 2011 or later, we recommend that you purchase these RAM modules for a total of 8 GB of RAM - enough memory for all but the most professional users. Users with other models of Macs can find inexpensive memory modules here.

Related Articles

Subscribe to our email newsletter

Sign up and get Macinstruct's tutorials delivered to your inbox. No spam, promise!

MacBook storage issue is still a relevant one in 2021. The promised 1 TB of storage — which is the capacity of the MacBook Air 2020 — will still be not enough for many. We generate more and more content on our devices and use apps that are bursting with cache files. This is what creates the cryptic category of “Other” storage on Mac.

On recent macOS versions, this storage category is labeled “other volumes in container.” Which, of course, doesn’t make it any less cryptic. This category contains junk files as well as important ones. That’s why you have to learn to check the storage on Mac properly.
So let’s figure out what Other Storage is and how to remove Other from your Mac.

What is Other on Mac Storage?

Simply, Other storage on Mac consists of files that do not easily fall into the clearer category labels like 'Audio.' The types of 'Other' files would include:

  1. Documents like PDF, .psd, .doc, etc.
  2. macOS system and temporary files.
  3. Cache files like user cache, browser cache, and system cache.
  4. Disk images and archives like .zip and .dmg.
  5. App plugins and extensions.
  6. Everything else that doesn’t fit into the main macOS categories.

Like this file:

What’s this? A song? An unknown archive? Why on Earth does it weigh 200 MB?

How to check Mac disk space usage

A few years back, Apple introduced “Optimized Storage,” a great feature for finding out how your disk space is structured. This is how to check the storage on Mac.

  1. Open the Apple menu (top right corner)
  2. Now, click About this Mac > Storage

Is your disk approaching full capacity? Now, click “Manage.” The sidebar to the left is really enlightening. This is the only place where on your Mac, it shows the size of your apps, books, and documents in gigabytes.

Where is Other Storage on a Mac

To show you where it is, let’s look at your Library. This is where your macOS keeps application components, widgets, and various cache archives. This part of your Mac is hidden from view for a reason. Messing up a few folders here may break your Mac. But let’s take a look:
Click on Finder > Go (in the top menu).
Now paste in: ~/Library/Caches

See those small folders? This is where your “Other” storage is. You’ve found it. Now, we'll see what's possible to delete.

How to delete Other Storage on Mac

You can’t entirely get rid of Other on Mac, but you can reduce how much storage space it takes up. We’re now going to look at each of the six types of Other files and show you how to clean up your Mac. We’re going to walk you through deleting useless documents, junk system files, system slowing cache files, old backups, and all sorts of other junk.

1. Remove documents from Other Storage space

You might not think that pure text documents take up a lot of space, but you may be surprised at the size of some .pages and .csv files. And that’s before you start adding images, downloading ebooks, and creating big presentations. Soon your Other documents can start to get out of hand.

To find and remove large and unneeded documents from Other Storage manually:

  1. From your desktop, press Command-F.
  2. Click This Mac.
  3. Click the first dropdown menu field and select Other.
  4. From the Search Attributes window, tick File Size and File Extension.
  5. Now you can input different document file types (.pdf, .pages, etc.) and file sizes to find large documents.
  6. Review the items and then delete as needed.
How To Clear Ram On Macbook Air

Luckily, there’s a much quicker and more thorough way. By using a CleanMyMac X you are presented with a clear view of all the massive files occupying your Other space.

To locate large hidden files in all folders with CleanMyMac:

  1. Download CleanMyMac X and click the Large & Old Files tab.
  2. Click the big Scan button to start the search.
  3. Now, review the results broken down into different categories: archives, documents, movies, etc.
  4. Look through your files and delete the ones you no longer need.

What’s great about this method is that you can sort the files by their size and thus free up space most effectively. And there’s a special category for Other files that don’t fit into either category. CleanMyMac X also locates .DMG files and archives the Other storage often comprise. These files can be moved to another folder/separate disk or could be removed securely.

Now, try it and see how it helps you slim down Other storage on Mac. Deleting your old files alone can recover you tons of space, but there are more space hoggers that fall under the Other data category.

2. Clean up Other space of the system and temporary files

Every second your Mac is on, the macOS creates and piles up system files — logs, for example. At some point, the system needs these files, but they quickly become outdated and just sit there, wasting your disk space. And guess what, they are in the Other Mac storage category, too.

These files are mostly temporary, but they never actually go away unless you do something about it. The difficulty is that Apple hasn’t made it easy to clear out system files. There’s a good reason for this – people often delete things they shouldn’t.

Let's inspect your Library folder

To manually find where a majority of apps temporary files live, navigate to ~/Users/User/Library/Application Support/. In this folder, you will find your applications, and some searching will reveal a lot of space being taken up. For example, you may have gigabytes worth of old iOS backups in
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

You could delete these manually, but a much safer and faster method is to use a specialist cleaning app like CleanMyMac X. It has a System Junk module that specifically looks for useless system files and knows what’s safe to delete.

Here’s how to easily remove system files from Other Storage:

  • Go to System Junk in CleanMyMac X.
  • Hit Scan.
  • Hit Clean.

That’s pretty much it. Seriously. If this is the first time you ever cleaned your Mac, you’ll see that the OS X Other storage tab has shrunk considerably after the system junk cleanup.

How To Clear Up Ram On Macbook Air

Using this method, I also deleted 16.69 GB of 'System Junk' from my MacBook.

3. Delete cache files from the Other data section

Cache files are not just another invisible storage hog. They are often one of the worst offenders, often taking up gigabytes of precious space. The three main types of cache are – browser, user, and system. Cache files are meant to help your system work faster, but they get bigger and bigger over time, eventually slowing your system down.

To manually clear cache files on Mac:

  1. Navigate to Go > Go To Folder.
  2. Type in ~/Library/Caches and click Go.
  3. Click-hold Option and drag the Caches folder to your desktop as a backup in case something goes wrong.
  4. Select all the files in the Caches folder.
  5. Drag them to the Trash.
  6. Empty Trash.

Follow the same steps for /Library/Caches (without the “~”) and ~/Library/Logs. Cache files sit in numerous folders, and with a little patience, you can clean them out manually (read more detailed instructions on clearing cache).

Did you know: Each time you rotate an image, its copy is automatically created on your drive. So, just 4 rotations are enough to turn a 2.5 MB file into 10 MB of disk space occupied.

4. Remove app plugins and extensions from Other storage

Another cool way to manage storage on Mac.
While apps are, unsurprisingly, categorized as Apps on the Storage bar, their add-ons are under the Other storage category. Compared to some types of files, app plugins and extensions probably won’t take up as much of your Mac's Other space. Still, every bit counts. Since extensions can sometimes cause other problems on your Mac, why not remove the ones you don’t use to be safe and free up some extra Other storage space at the same time?

How To Clear Other Memory On Macbook Air

Tracking down all your add-ons can be a hassle. Some you’ve forgotten you had (like that nCage extension for Chrome), others you didn’t know of in the first place.

Here’s how to manually remove extensions from Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

To remove extensions from Safari:

  1. Open Safari browser.
  2. Go to the Safari menu and click Preferences.
  3. Select the Extensions tab.
  4. Select the extension you want to remove and click “Uninstall.”

To remove extensions from Chrome browser:

  1. Open Chrome.
  2. Click the three-dot icon in the top-right corner.
  3. Click More tools > Extensions.
  4. Disable or remove as you choose.

To remove extensions from Firefox:

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox browser.
  2. Click on the burger menu in the top-right corner.
  3. Choose Add-ons.
  4. From the Extensions and Plugins tabs, disable and remove whatever you want.

Important! If you’re not sure what a plugin does, don’t rush to remove it. Try disabling it first and see if your apps and your system work as expected. You can always remove that add-on later. Also, note that Chrome extensions can’t be deleted automatically. But if you’d like to get rid of them, we’ll list these extensions for you and tell you how to do that manually.

5. Clear Other space of disk images and archives

Normally, archives and images are files you keep for a reason. However, if you think you might have accumulated some useless .zip and .dmg files on your Mac, then you should definitely clear them out as well.

You can find these files using Spotlight search:

  1. Open Finder.
  2. Type DMG/ZIP in the search field.
  3. Select Search: This Mac.
  4. Sort the results by Size.

Finder will show you all files of the format you’ve specified, sorted by size. You can clean out those you don’t need.

How

To safely and easily remove all your old unused disk images, CleanMyMac X has a dedicated tool within the System Junk module. Everything is categorized, so you have a better understanding of what you’re removing.

  1. Go to the System Junk module in CleanMyMac X.
  2. Click Scan and when it’s done, click Review Details.

Now you get a detailed overview of some ultra-specific categories of files that are normally invisible to you. Among those, you’ll see Unused Disk Images (another name for DMG installations). Then, there’s Old Updates — you would like to remove those too. Old Updates are past versions of update packages that you already got installed.

Do you often use graphic editors like Photoshop or Sketch? Then, you’ll probably be fascinated by the Document Versions feature. If you click on the Document Versions tab (System Junk > Scan > Review Details), you’ll be able to see how much of your space is taken by large document re-edits. Imagine a 60 MB Photoshop file cloned 10 times with just slight differences. In CleanMyMac X, you can delete these intermediate revisions. And, handy enough, the program keeps just the original file and its final revision on the drive.

6. Get rid of everything else from Other disk space

Even Other storage space has its own “other” files, and no, the irony of that statement is not lost on us.

Other storage on Mac can also include:

  • Files in your user library (screen savers, for example).
  • Files Spotlight search doesn’t recognize.

Typically, they won’t be as big of a share of Other data on your Mac as cache files and other items we’ve cleared out. However, if you’re determined to clean out as much Other Mac storage as possible, here’s how you can delete screensavers:

  1. Open Finder.
  2. In the Menu bar, select Go > Go to Folder.
  3. Type this: /System/Library/Screen Savers/ and click Go.

You’ll see the screen saver files now — they are lightweight, but for the sake of being thorough, you can trash them as well.

As for files, Spotlight doesn’t recognize them, they are rare. They could include files like Windows Boot Camp partitions or virtual machine hard drives. If you don’t recall putting anything like that on your Mac, you probably have nothing to look for.

7. Remove application logs and support files

Apps on your Mac generate and store lots of files, which are mainly logs and support files. After you delete the application, those files lay still on your hard drive occupying space and doing nothing. So it’s a good idea to remove those.

  1. Open Finder.
  2. Press Command-Shift-G and go to ~/Library/Application Support

Look for the folders that have the same name as the app you’ve deleted. You can safely move those to Trash.

How

Then, go to the following locations to delete other app-related files:

~/Library/Logs

~/Library/Containers

Clear Cookies Macbook Air

And it's done! Hopefully, you managed to free up some GBs in the Other storage section.

How much can you expect to delete from Other storage on Mac?

How to clear memory on macbook air

Macbook Air How To Guide

You’ll never remove the Other data section from Mac entirely, nor should you want to. It’s perfectly fine to have space taken up by necessary files, whatever category label they have. What is not okay is valuable storage space being wasted. Having a monthly cleanup can help you remove old, unneeded files and keep your hard drive organized.